Day confidently rolled in having just given birth to her daughter a mere four days earlier (“VO is fantastic —nobody is going to judge me for wearing maternity clothes!”) She wasn’t prepared for what was about to hit her. Ivona , a Polish text-to-speech company, was creating a computerized voice…

Long before he brought people into his laboratory at Columbia University to smoke crack cocaine, Carl Hart saw its effects firsthand. Growing up in poverty, he watched relatives become crack addicts, living in squalor and stealing from their mothers. Childhood friends ended up in prisons and…

It was Vladimir Nabokov’s wife, Véra who rescued the manuscript of “Lolita” from a back-yard incinerator at Cornell University. Beset by doubt over the book’s subject matter, Nabokov hoped to burn the novel before it reached the public. Likewise, the American literary critic George Steiner had…

If you're driving north, up the west coast of Grand Theft Auto V , as I did in the 40th hour I was playing the game, you might spot a crashed car smoldering in the long ditch between the northbound and southbound lanes. The car doesn't appear there every time. The man who was in the car appears to…

The NFL is a conservative organization, and like most massive sports leagues, it's fairly adverse to change. So an idea like using lasers to project a visible first down line across the playing surface, replacing the lengthy process of bringing out the chains to measure, is going to have to wait a…

“The great fucks that you may have had,” a real-estate salesman muses in front of a potential client in David Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Glengarry Glen Ross. “What do you remember about them? For me, I’m saying, what it is, it’s probably not the orgasm. Some broad’s forearm on your neck.…

The last line of Steven Soderbergh’s Behind The Candelabra is the first line of the memoir upon which it is based: “Too much of a good thing is wonderful .” The words, paraphrased from a Mae West quote, served as a personal motto for Liberace, the wildly popular and even-more-wildly flamboyant…

In the black-box theater, Avenues’ chief administrative officer helped assure parents that their kids’ diet was sufficiently organic, local and healthful. The regional director of its food-service contractor was on hand to address any fears about carbohydrates. A doctor from Mount Sinai Hospital was…

Errol Morris's newest documentary, The Unknown Known, is a 96-minute interview with Machiavellian mouthpiece Donald Rumsfeld, the former secretary of defense who served both under Ford and, most recently, George W. Bush. The film's title comes from Rumsfeld's infamous and obscure gibberish about…

Photographs by Julian Broad. In a rare interview, Polish film director Roman Polanski tells Vanity Fair contributor James Fox that the wave of anger and hatred that followed his September 2009 Swiss arrest for the outstanding charge of unlawful sex with a minor was much worse than the reaction to…

You hate to hear the story, again and again. I don’t care what most people do in their private lives and, insofar as you can feel a way about someone whose only relationship to your immediate life was (1) as a name on an album sleeve, and then (2) a strong reason to eat lunch at your desk, it was…

Mister Cee of Hot 97 spoke bluntly about his sexual identity. Chad Batka for The New York Times It was early Thursday morning and Mister Cee, a D.J. on the hip-hop station Hot 97 and a prominent figure in New York hip-hop history, was in tears. The day before, an audio clip was released in which he…

(UPDATE: Part 2 of this series, “Reconstructing Dreamland” can be found here .) In the wake of Electric Zoo being canceled on its final day due to some unfortunate drug overdoses, I thought it was time someone from within the music business spoke up. Unfortunately, most people in the music business…

Although they came close, cassette tapes never went away completely. With most manufacturers discontinuing production of tape decks long ago—and Sony retiring its line of handheld tape recorders this year—it seems the final nails have been banged into the format’s coffin. But thanks to a number of…

Photography of Kathy Sierra by Katy McCarthy In 2007, Sierra was one of the most visible women in tech. She taught the Java programming language at Sun Microsystems. Her books on software design were top sellers on Amazon. Her blog was on Technorati’s top 100, a list that included other blogging…

Peter Molyneux is up to his old tricks again, for better or worse. He’s gone gaga for Godus , and he wants the world to hear all about it. And who knows? Maybe this time – finally, after years of squandering his legendary status on unfulfilled promises and mediocre games – he’s onto something. Godus…

When Joel and Ethan Coen were growing up, they used to make Super 8 films, including remakes of Hollywood movies that they had watched on TV. Since then, the Coens have continued to let their imagination loose while ranging wide across cinematic and literary genres, drawing on pulp literature (…

LOS ANGELES — PLAYING Skyler White on the television show “Breaking Bad” for the past five seasons has been one of the most rewarding creative journeys I’ve embarked on as an actor. But the role has also taken me on another kind of journey — one I never would have imagined. My character, to judge…

Entertainment Geekly is a new weekly column which examines contemporary pop culture through a geek lens and simultaneously examines contemporary geek culture through a pop lens. So many lenses! Fans are awful. I don’t mean fans of any one particular TV show or movie franchise or literary saga or…

I’ll never know what it’s like to be a father. I’m a woman. So, there is that. But I think I should be able to dimly grasp what it’s like to be a Dad. Several recent video games have featured troubled fathers as their protagonists , which should pose the perfect opportunity for me to finally feel…

The author with Paris Hilton. Photo by Andrew Boyle First and foremost, the term “fashion week” is somewhat of a misnomer. It really should be called “fashion month.” The week bounces around from New York, London, and Paris to Milan, and since it happens twice a year, fashion week is really a…

DIPLOMATIC LIMBO Left, the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange took refuge in June 2012. Right, Assange makes a public statement from an embassy balcony, August 2012., Left, by olivia harris/reuters/landov; right, by Neil Hall/Rex USA. I. Dead End Every afternoon, at…

ST. PETERSBURG His alarm beeps at 3:30 a.m., drowning out the talk radio that keeps him company all night. He rolls over slowly and prays: "Please, Lord, give me the strength to get up." It takes a half-hour, sometimes longer, but eventually he hobbles to the kitchen to make tea. And three days a…

This story first appeared in the Aug. 5, 2013 issue of Sportsnet magazine. It was recently honoured with a notable mention in the Best American Sports Writing of 2013. Adam Kreek has just finished a four-hour overnight shift rowing through thrashing wind and waves. The two-hour nap he’s owed is even…

Illustration by Tim Enthoven Stroll among the games at the Cosmopolitan, the newest casino on the Las Vegas Strip, and you might be overwhelmed by the latest whooping and flashing gambling machines. All the high-resolution monitors and video effects, devoted to themes ranging from deep-sea-fishing…

The Crash of 2008 has infused our societies with enormous scepticism on the role of the authorities, both government and Central Banks. It is quite natural that many dream of a currency that politicians, bankers and central bankers cannot manipulate; a currency of the people by the people for the…

carr2n: Hitler's bodyguard is dead. http://t.co/aXsH2rFhWB

Jump to S atoshi Nakamoto doesn't exist. Or, at least, if he does, he's one of the rare modern individuals who is practically impossible to locate. Nakamoto is the creator of Bitcoin. Over the years since the virtual currency's inception, there have been several quixotic expeditions to find him.…

These are rules I've picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I'm writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what's taking place in the story. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and…

nelsongeorge: Elmore Leonard: A Man of Few, Yet Perfect, Words http://t.co/HqC1DlbZg5 Cool piece on the coolest crime writer ever. Lean, mean, funny prose

The original version of this story, published Sept. 2, 2013, did not include any comments from actor Tim Curry due to a stroke he suffered in 2012. Curry has since recovered enough to speak with BuzzFeed News about his memories of Clue — in this updated version of the story, all quotations from him…

How indie developers finished Half-Life 3 Feature When a former Valve writer shared his vision for the most-anticipated sequel ever, a group of indie developers tried to bring it to life Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice players "need to be constantly on edge" warns Hidetaka Miyazaki By Rachel Weber news…

Got beats? If you’re a hip-hop fan – or a fan of music in general – then you’ve probably heard at least one instrumental rap album, whether it’s an established classic like Dilla’s Donuts or a more obscure mp3 release from an artist like Skywlkr or Friendzone. But how did hip-hop’s beat tape culture…

ATLANTA—On a recent Monday evening, 12 of the most powerful figures in this city's music industry gathered over Buffalo wings and Sprite in a cramped recording studio, making decisions that could propel a handful of aspiring musicians to prominence in some of the most important venues in town: strip…

Texas is the center of the heated debate about abortion and women's reproductive rights. A new game, Choice: Texas , is set to tackle the issue. But the game has angered those who support new Texan laws restricting access to abortion clinics. Video games traditionally give the player extraordinary…

Jump to You know this person. The coffee shop guy. The nondescript 30-something pecking at a netbook, occasionally whispering for a refill or making a beeline to the restroom. What if all this time, while you thought he was refreshing his email inbox or Tweeting at celebrities or Googling himself,…

Errol Morris discusses his Donald Rumsfeld doc ‘The Unknown Known,’ at the Telluride Film Festival. YouTube On February 29, 2004, Errol Morris lumbered up the steps of the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, to accept the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for The Fog of War . The film traced the…

J-Zone by Keith HasVision Rogers Photography [ Editor’s note: In Tweets is Watching, Phillip Mlynar asks local artists questions based solely on the contents of their Twitter timeline. ] J-Zone has taken a break from his self-imposed exile from the rap world to ready his new album, Peter Pan…